Exchange Server 2019 Public Preview

We’re pleased to announce a preview build of Exchange Server 2019 is now available. You can download it here.

We strongly believe Office 365 delivers the best and most cost-effective experience to our customers, but we understand that some customers have reasons to remain on-premises. Exchange Server 2019 is designed to deliver security, performance, and improved administration and management capabilities. These are the attributes our largest on-premises customers tell us they need from Exchange. We also have features end-users will love too of course.

Here are some of the key features in each of these areas:

Security: We’ve included support for installing Exchange Server 2019 onto Windows Server Core. Exchange Server 2019 installed on Windows Server 2019 Core provides the most secure platform for Exchange. You also have the option of installing the Exchange 2019 Preview onto Windows Server 2016 Core or Windows Server 2016/2019 with Desktop Experience, but we have worked hard to make sure running Exchange on Windows Server Core 2019 is the best choice for our code.

Performance: We’ve done work to allow Exchange Server to take advantage of the larger core and memory packed systems our customers buy these days. We’re confident you can be very successful running Exchange Server with up to 48 processor cores and 256GB of RAM.

We’ve re-engineered search using Bing technology to make it even faster and provide better results, and in doing so have made database failovers much faster, and administration easier. The search indexes are now within the database itself. There are no more separate log files to manage. As the index data is now within the database, normal log shipping includes the database and search data in a single replication and the index is always up to date on all database copies.

At Ignite last year, we told you that Exchange Online had started using Solid State Drives. Yes, SSD’s. Many people were shocked at this. For years we’ve been telling you to use cheap low-cost storage, and then we switched and started using SSD? What’s up with that Exchange team?

Well, that isn’t exactly what we said, what we said was we were using SSD’s in addition to cheap low-cost spinning disks. Why? Well we’ve pretty much reached the limits of what we can do with cheap storage, read latency in those disks hasn’t really improved yet storage capacity just keeps getting larger. It led us to conclude we needed to re-think our strategy. And we did, and the short version is that we store some of the data from those spinning disks on the SSD, and we use that super-fast device to store key search data, to make logins faster, and message retrieval faster. We still use low-cost storage for storing all of data but intelligently use SSD’s to make the overall user experience better.

We’re adding this tiered storage read/write capability to Exchange Server 2019 but it’s not enabled in the Preview build. We know you will all have lots of questions about this new feature and we will of course have planning and configuration guidance available when we ship, but we will be talking a lot more about these changes at Microsoft Ignite 2018. You are going, aren’t you? We are.

End user experience: One of the most important capabilities in Exchange is calendaring. All large enterprises are heavy calendar users and those organizations rely on calendars to help people get their work done. We’re bringing a few key features such as Do Not Forward and Simplified Calendar Sharing from Office 365 to On-Premises Exchange. We’re sure a lot of end users will be very happy with those features. Administrators get some new calendaring features too, as we’re adding the ability for admins to manage events on user’s calendars and to assign delegate permissions more easily.

One thing to note is that Unified Messaging role will not be available in Exchange Server 2019. Customers who currently connect either a 3rd party PBX or Skype for Business Server to Exchange Server won’t be able to do so with Exchange Server 2019 mailboxes. Those customers considering an upgrade to Exchange Server 2019 should consider migrating to Skype for Business Server 2019 and using Cloud Voicemail, or migrating to Office 365 with Cloud Voicemail. More information on this change will be available prior to launch.

That’s a brief roundup of many of the changes we have baked into Exchange Server 2019.

We plan on launching Exchange Server 2019 later this year, and we’re planning on talking about it a lot more at Microsoft Ignite.

Take a look at the Preview, and we really suggest you install it on Windows Server Core, and Windows Server 2019 Core if you have access to that. We will be publishing a blog post with tips for running Exchange on Server Core in a few days.

But please remember it’s not a production release, so please don’t install into production at all.

We look forward to your feedback, and in case we didn’t say it enough times, we’ll see you at Microsoft Ignite!

Thanks for taking a look at our preview. Yes, we are aware that there are still content index files being generated. Rest assured the actual indexes for your data are actually in the mailbox database. We still have a bit of clean up to do before we release later this year. The work item to stop creating these is actually in active development and was not completed before we cut the preview build.

Thank you for the post. Is there a possibility you can elaborate on your statement “One thing to note is that Unified Messaging role will not be available in Exchange Server 2019”? We still rely heavily on our on our Premise Exchange with Unified Messaging. From the reading I have done today even with Skype for Business, “you must upgrade to Cloud Voicemail if you are using Exchange Server 2019”. Any further insight is appreciated, we do have staff attending Microsoft Ignite 2018, but this could really impact our organization. Appreciate the Blog always.

This feature is near and dear to my heart and I am happy to hear you are excited about it too. The experience on Windows Server 2019 Server Core truly is the best. I hope you have access to those builds and can give it a try.

“We strongly believe Office 365 delivers the best and most cost-effective experience to our customers, but we understand that some customers have reasons to remain on-premises.”
Can you share any information on the solution that will allow the removal of the last exchange on premise server in hybrid mode using ad sync ? What are all the customer with an “admin” exchange 2013 box going to do , once exchange 2013 is EOL ? thanks

Wohoo! Finally! Just one question: I tried to install the bits on a Windows Server 2016 Core machine and the Installation Fails with “This computer requires the Microsoft Unified Communications Managed API 4.0”. But of Course this can’t be installed on a Server Core Installation because it is missing some components required by UCMA. Is this a know issue or is there a Workaround? Thanks! Cheers Christian

I’m very disappointed to hear that you’re removing UM from Exchange 2019 and I hope that you’ll reconsider that decision. Or at the very least, allow for some sort of compatibility mode where mailboxes on Exchange 2019 can continue to be UM enabled as long as an Exchange 2016 server remains in the mix to handle the SIP trunks, etc.
The suggestion to use Cloud Voicemail as a replacement is not reasonable. First, if I’m still using on-prem Exchange its because I have various political and/or technical reasons why a cloud service doesn’t work for my organization. So telling me to use a cloud service to replace functionality stripped out of my on-prem server just doesn’t make any sense – if I could use the cloud, I’d be using the cloud. Second, even if I could clear the political and technical hurdles to using Cloud Voicemail, it’s not even just a “drop-in” service. I also have to go deploy Skype for Business and (if I’m understanding the documentation right) toss out my IP-PBX. I hope I’m wrong about that, because there is no way I could get support for such a migration.
So, what should have been a straightforward upgrade/migration to Exchange 2019 during our next hardware refresh now becomes much more complicated and expensive since I’ll have to purchase an on-prem voicemail system.

We appreciate this might be tough for some customers, and respect your position. I will say, you don’t have to upgrade to 2019 the moment it arrives, or at all. We’re not changing anything with regard to UM in earlier versions, they will be on working while you figure out your longer term plan.

Since Gabriel noticed we still have a bit of cleanup to do, it is a preview after all, you will also notice that some remnants of Unified Messaging have yet to be removed. We are aware and actively putting the final DVD on a diet between now and RTM.

“We’ve re-engineered search using Bing technology” – My experience with Bing is that it can’t find stuff even on Microsoft’s own pages. It deeply concerns me to have it as THE search engine in Exchange.

Have you tried using a different browser? The team which runs our download center has investigated these reports and informed us the download center is functioning normally at this time. Some browser/OS combinations seem to be having difficulty processing the package due to its size. You may also try using the download manager (https://www.microsoft.com/download/details.aspx?id=27960).

Any hope of DKIM signing coming in one of the next builds? Office 365 has this feature, it would be logical to also have it natively in Exchange Server? Native support would be so much better than third-party DKIM addons which silently break after Exchange Server updates.

Hey Guys,
Many Antispam Software/Tools (actually almost all of them) require to be installed on the Mailbox server, and require the GUI capabilities of the Server. How an Exchange 2019 installed on a Core-Server is going to deal with that ?
is there an Upgrade on the Exchange2019 to support O365 Cloud protection ? or those third antispam Software should Support Server-Core ?
thanks for your answers

Thanks for asking this question. There is a common misconception that Server Core does not include a Graphical User Interface (GUI). It does. Server Core removes the Explorer shell and the UI extensions. That also means that MMC is not installed because it depends on Explorer Shell. GUI based Windows applications which don’t depend on Explorer or MMC continue to function normally on Server Core but may look a little different, e.g. Font usage. Even the graphical Exchange Server setup wizard runs normally on Server Core for example. What we tend to see is that the installer for some applications doesn’t function normally but the underlying application works normally. In those instances, installing the application using a “quiet mode” supported by the installer is often an available workaround. Our own Unified Communications Managed API (UCMA) is an example where the previously released installer doesn’t work correctly on Server Core but the underlying functionality works fine. This is why we have created a Server Core compliant redistribution package for this and placed it in the Exchange Server 2019 .ISO. If an application installer does not work correctly, we would expect ISV’s to make use of an installer that is compliant with Server Core. If the application requires Explorer or MMC, then additional work will be required by the ISV. Installing and running the management experience for these applications on a machine with the full Desktop Experience is also an option.

That being said, Windows Server 2019 Server Core will include an optional Feature On Demand (FOD) component for Application Compatibility. This is intended to assist the Windows ecosystem in their product transition to support Server Core. It will install a supported version of MMC, as well as other components, which run on Server Core. The Exchange Team will not support use of the AppCompat FOD on servers where Exchange Server is installed. This is intended to be a transitional technology only and we have worked closely with Windows over the past two years to support Server Core natively in this release. The Server Core development team is aware of our plans in this regard and has expressed support for our approach.

We believe that the transition to Server Core as the preferred operating system for Exchange Server is a journey that will improve over time as the ecosystem adapts to this change. It is one that will result in more secure servers by removing functionality not required by Exchange Server and be worth the effort.

This isn’t new to Exchange, we’ve supported n-2 co-existence only the last few versions. It’s been 8 years since Exchange 2010 and we’ve released two major versions you could have upgraded to without hitting this issue.

It’s possible your licensing terms might allow you to run 2016 anyway, you should contact the license re-seller, and if it’s all good, upgrade to 2016, then to 2019 if you want to.

Yes, we support Elliptic Curve Cryptography with Exchange Server and we actually are recommending this over non-ECC key exchange. Exchange doesn’t actually implement our own key exchange, hashing or cipher algorithm negotiations. We ride on top of and rely on the capabilities of the operating system. We believe this gives admins the greatest implementation flexibility and consistency. It allows Exchange to adopt new capabilities as soon as operating system support is available. We currently are able to support ECC all the way back to Exchange 2010 on Windows Server 2008 R2.